As some of you may already know, I’m a graduate student in UTSA’s history department. I’m writing a masters thesis on 1967 Hurricane Beulah and Dr. Mario E. Ramirez. Please write me if you’d like to share memories/stories of the hurricane or of the fascinating physician from the Rio Grande Valley. I’d love to hear them.
Fernando Ortiz Jr.
I was a 1966 graduate of Harlingen High School and had just started to work as a news reporter at KRGV channel 5. I spent the night in Brownsville at the weather bureau as the hurricane blew over. The next day I flew over south Padre Island to film the massive devastation. The tidal surge had breached the width of the island in places. Live fish and crabs were swimming across highways, miles from the gulf. While damage from the hurricane was extensive, destruction from the ensuing flood caused much more additional damage, especially in the Harlingen area. I remember filming from a National Guard amphibious craft as people were rescued from their homes. It was a terrible time, but it was also a time to witness how people come together the help one another in such times of trial and trauma.
Thank you so much for your memories. I love the bizarre little details like fish and crabs on highways that make the crazed horror of natural disaster turn a reader’s blood cold. I’m glad you made it through.
Beulah was my first hurricane. I was 12 and living in Kingsville after having been adopted by my paternal grandparents. It took out two of my favorite trees in the back yard, a huge mesquite tree and an ash. I had built a woodpecker house that was in the ash tree but had been taken over by a family of screech owls. Sadly, the woodpecker house was nowhere to be found after Beulah.
Kingsville was hit hard by Beulah. I believe have pictures in my junior high yearbook if you would like me to digitize them and send them to you.